Far Worse Than Annoying: A Culture of Harassment in The Annoying Orange Writer’s Room

Note: this situation is ongoing, this article will be updated as more information is learned.

In early April, recent college graduate Brian Fegan tweeted about his new place of employment.

To an unaware eye, this tweet is simply an an announcement of an exciting development in the career of a young creative. Putting a little more thought into things however, one cannot help but ask themselves questions. How did a twenty one year old immediately gain the rank of head writer? How did he leap-frog staff who have worked tirelessly for years? Even more perplexing, why did he include Apple in one of the main group? Apple died in the first ever Annoying Orange episode in 2009, and has not returned to any episodes since. Wouldn’t someone even slightly knowledgeable in Annoying Orange’s catalog include Grapefruit in their list? Or Marshmallow?

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For those unaware, Annoying Orange is an American live-action/animated comedy web series created by Dane Boedigheimer (known online as DaneBoe). The series follows an anthropomorphic orange who annoys fruits, vegetables, and various other objects by telling crude jokes and puns till their deadly demise. In addition, the show satirizes and parodies pop culture, including television programs, commercials, anime series, films, music, celebrities, politicians, fairy tales, video games; and internet culture, with a touch of off-color humor, surrealism and gross-out humor.

As the channel grew, Dane brought in additional writers and editors to continue putting out at least weekly videos (if not multiple in a week.) In 2012, Cartoon Network picked up the series under the name The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange. The series ran for two, thirty episode seasons before being cancelled in 2014 after wide critical panning. At the same time, the uploads never stopped coming on the Annoying Orange YouTube channel, with Boedigheimer still voicing the titular orange.

“You’d have to talk to Dane about Dane,” one writer stated. “They are a pretty private person, which I don’t think anyone can really judge them for.” The sentiment is shared among the staff writers I spoke to. “I didn’t agree to this interview to speak about Dane. I don’t want to make them seem like a bad person, I mean — I don’t blame them for what’s happening now.” While journalistically frustrating, I respected the writers’ wishes and did not push more than needed. What is publicly known is that Dane launched an NFT Project in July 2021, and nine months later Fegan stepped into a position of power. These events may or may not be related, (i.e. perhaps Dane couldn’t spend as much time on the show,) but what matters is that Fegan had arrived, and with him came the problems.

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“I remember his first day very well. He walked in with Tom, one of the producers, who introduced him to us as our new head writer. Tom swiftly walked out, and then Brian, in a very serious tone, said that we would never see him again. While we looked around confused, he laughed, said ‘Gotcha!’ and took a seat at the front of the room. I asked him how he got involved in the project, and instead of answering, he yelled ‘Hey Apple!’ and fired a rubber band at my head. We didn’t write anything for the whole eight hour meeting.”

When asked to describe Fegan, several of the same adjectives kept popping up. “Immature,” “Vindictive,” and “Plain Stupid” paint a very clear picture, but it’s also one that is depressingly common in the entertainment industry. What seems distinctive is his apparent lack of work, and his consistent pattern of passing off others’ as his own.

“I think maybe twice he came up with a joke all on his own. Every day someone would pitch something, and then he would repeat it with worse wording and point at himself like he wanted us to go, ‘Good one Brian,’” said one writer. “That’s annoying, but I can deal with it, but when someone has an idea he doesn’t like? [long pause] It might not have been the worst one, but one time he walked over and then just started knocking on the writer’s forehead going, ‘What kind of idea is that? What, do you got packing peanuts in there? Hello?’ and he kept doing that for like six straight minutes until it turned noon, and then he walked straight out to get his lunch.”

All of these stories run counter to the narrative Fegan has been pushing on Twitter. For the past few months, his followers have been treated to bi-weekly updates of the wonderful collaborative process of making wonderfully original internet comedy.

Of course, even Fegan’s papering over of reality still reveals several cracks. Less than a week into his tenure as head writer, Fegan began tweeting about a series of disagreements with the producing team related to his desire to branch the series out into more serialized story lines. “I can tell you confidently he didn’t actually care about artistic merit. He’s too lazy to actually have an opinion on work. He just wanted to make big changes so he could say he made big changes.” Fegan ended up having a private meeting with the producers following his tweets, which resulted in him posting the following apology on his page.

From the writers I spoke to, Fegan did not show any new commitment after this statement was released. “We all thought if he was going to get fired, that that was it. Once it wasn’t? We lost a lot of hope, and went back to enduring the abuse.” The most notable change I noticed was that he started using GIFs in his tweets, which I would argue is a very surface level change; although it would seem that Fegan’s modus operandi is to appear to make changes without having to enact any.

At the start of May, Fegan proudly declared his goal to diversy the writers room with fresh female talent, and posted a public application form in the above tweet. A little over two weeks later, Fegan proudly announced that the applicants have been looked through and the new hires have been brought in. This would be a terrific act that would actually be worthy of praise… if it weren’t for the fact that no women were ever actually hired.

“It was an unbelievable lie. Just so demonstrably untrue. When he would tweet about how we were all getting along, that was obviously false, but there was a chance he might have believed he wasn’t lying. I don’t know how he could justify saying something happened when it could be infinitely proved that it did not.”

Shortly after the “new hires were brought in,” Fegan got the producers to fund a mandatory writers’ retreat at a lake house in Crestline, CA. The purpose of this trip (as stated on Twitter) was for the writers to come together in a kind of bonding, but what ended up occurring was Fegan getting increasingly drunk and rambling. According to the writers I spoke to, his ramblings consisted of observations that were either dishwater dull, (“Why is it that you always lose a pen before it runs out of ink?”) or needlessly offensive. (“I don’t drink coffee but if I did I’d imagine it’d look like Rihanna.”)

When one of the writers suggested he take a break from the drinks, (Fegan had been making a series of tropical flavored cocktails, shouting that it was “Tiki Time,”) Fegan threw an ice cube slightly smaller than a tennis ball at his head, thankfully missing. The other writers then stepped up and told him that he can’t do that and he could have given him a concussion, Fegan shouted that “it was a joke. It was just water, no one’s ever gotten a concussion from water.” Fegan then took his cocktail ingredients into his bedroom and locked himself in. The next morning, over a tense breakfast, Fegan addressed the group saying “we all got a little crazy last night,” despite the fact he was the only one drinking.

It was shortly after this writer’s retreat that I began receiving private messages on Twitter from the writers asking me to do a piece. Many of them believe the only hope they have of removing Fegan as head writer is to generate a public outcry against him. This initially put me off slightly, as I do not consider myself a hit man. I always go into a story seeking to give a balanced and complete portrait of events, not simply giving one side “a win.” Therefore, this article would not be complete without giving Mr. Fegan an opportunity to comment and give his version of events. When I reached out to Mr. Fegan, he replied —

“If you publish that f*****g article I will hire men to cut off your fingers and feed them to pigeons.”

Well there you have it.